Fermium was discovered by a team of scientists led by Albert Ghiorso in 1952 while studying the radioactive debris produced by the detonation of the first hydrogen bomb. The isotope they discovered, fermium-255, has a half-life of about 20 hours and was produced by combining 17 neutrons with uranium-238, which then underwent eight beta decays. Today, fermium is produced though a lengthy chain of nuclear reactions that involves bombarding each isotope in the chain with neutrons and then allowing the resulting isotope to undergo beta decay.